Informing
by Jana Kay
Summary: The morning after Angelus kills his family, he reflects on his past and the words Darla told him


TITLE: Informing  
AUTHOR: Jana Kay  
EMAIL: jana_kay17@yahoo.com.au  
DISCLAIMER: All characters belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, the WB and 20th Century Fox. They aren't mine, but I still like to play with them. No profit being made.  
RATING: PG-13 There's some blood and allusions to sex in here.  
PAIRING: Darla/Angelus  
SPOILERS: The Prodigal   
SUMMARY: The morning after Angelus kills his family, he reflects on his past and the words Darla told him.  
AUTHORS NOTES: I believe the original Angelus had feelings just like Spike and Dru, but he just chose to block them, hence the label 'cruel bastard.' I also believe that when Angelus appeared again in season 2 of BtVS his demon had been driven mad, and was therefore nothing like the one that Darla turned in 1753. Anyway, those are my reasons for writing him the way I do.   
  
*****  
  
Shifting shadows of inky blackness were what woke him in the pre-dawn hours. Ignoring them, he mumbled something unintelligible then rolled over, attempting to fall back down into sleep.   
  
Expecting to find nothing, he shot to wakefulness when he encountered a soft, cool body beside him. His eyes cracked open slightly and took in the sight of loose golden hair flowing over modest pillows, soft pink lips parted slightly though no chest was rising and falling.  
  
For a few moments, he wondered in horror and amazement at the sight of this dead woman laying beside him on rough textured, cotton sheets, but then clarity came washing over him like a tidal wave over a village, drenching and saturating his mind and senses.  
  
He was caught off guard for a moment when he realised just how quickly he'd jumped out of the bed, and he closed his eyes for a moment to regain not his physical balance, but his mental.  
  
Taking a final look at his Dam as she lay sleeping, not seeing the confusion written over his own features that he didn't even recognise as being there, he pulled on his soft, brown breeches and left his childhood bedroom.  
  
Feet traversed familiar yet alien wooden planks as he allowed himself to be guided by them, but the boy that was once Liam and now wasn't abruptly stopped short before walking into the kitchen.   
  
Spinning around, he walked quickly back down the little hall and turned through the doorway that led to the back porch. His feet froze for a moment as he watched pink shadows start to dot the ocean of clouds covering the partially hidden moon, but then he forced himself to continue, unknowingly breathing a sigh of relief as he made it outside and sank down on the rough, wooden porch swing.   
  
This time, he breathed deeply intentionally, testing his new senses. The faint scents of cinnamon, custard and vanilla tickled his nose. The only bakery in this part of Galway was two streets over, and must have obviously started its baking already, even though the sun wasn't yet up.  
  
He lay his dark head back on the swing as he tried to make sense of the confusion starting to creep back into his mind. They hadn't left last night after he'd taken the lives of his family and then sat at the kitchen table with their bodies laying around him. When she'd returned, she told him they'd be sleeping here that day before moving on.  
  
She hadn't told him her name yet. He knew her only as his Dam. And she hadn't yet given him a name, telling him only that the boy Liam was forever gone. So now he sat nameless, a nobody, a nothing, on the porch where he'd once been Liam, and he'd had a father who never liked him, a mother who would croon to him at night even though he'd long since grown into a man, and a sister Kathy. Dear, sweet Kathy whom he'd swung on this very porch swing many, many times, when the sunlight had been able to safely touch them both.  
  
But now Liam and all he'd touched were gone, laying pale and broken in delicious pools of blood in the kitchen he hadn't been able to enter, in the kitchen his mother had so often cooked him breakfast in, and before that when he was younger, had coddled him on weary knees while his father, stoic as always, told his dearest mother not to pamper 'the boy.'  
  
Never one for caring, his father. Never one to feel sympathy or empathy or any other emotion that might possibly tie and bind him to his family, to the human race. At least, that's what he'd always believed, until he'd watched his father's stoic armor crack before he'd walked out the door for the final time, and //I was never in your way, boy....// he'd thought for just a few moments that maybe he'd been wrong all along, maybe he really shouldn't walk away.  
  
But a lifetime of seeing the sneers, the pointed looks of disapproval, the shame that was wrapped up in eyes identical to his own as they watched him grow up and move through life, all made it far, far too late to stop. The slamming of the door as he raced into the sunlight was the sound of the final nail driving into his coffin.   
  
But of course, he hadn't even managed to stay in the damn thing.  
  
He shook his head now as he growled in anger, a trace of sadness and loss managing to worm its way in and make him even more furious. The man was dead! What right did he have to still affect him? He'd killed him himself, his own father! Had felt the salty tears pour down the wrinkled cheeks as he'd drunk in and tasted the life that had fathered him, the essence that had given *him* life, and he'd *enjoyed* it....  
  
He never even realised when the growls turned to whimpers, and his own tears trickled down gently, wetly accompanying those of the man he'd called father in hatred, love, pure need for acceptance until he thought his heart had finally hardened, that still fell down wrinkled cheeks in his memory.  
  
He'd never know now that he'd been loved, never know that there was a wealth of emotion just for him laying beneath the stoic armor, never know that the tears that fell from the old man's cheeks weren't for himself, for the death being forced down his throat, but rather for the nobody, the nameless demon sitting outside on the porch swing that had stolen his only son's life, and for the son Liam himself, now long gone (or was he?) because of the fall from grace he'd unintentionally let himself become.  
  
It felt as though hours had passed before the nameless one lifted his head, warily eyeing the shadows that had silently grown in depth and abundance over the horizon.   
  
This too was something he didn't know his father mourned for him as the tears streaked his cheeks, though they were also for the still innocent family laying broken and bloody around his feet thanks to the work of familiar hands. Never again could his son sit and watch the sun come up, never again could he walk in the sun, never again could he do *anything* in the sun.  
  
The fallen son still tried to though.   
  
He waited there for the fingers of golden sun to reach out to him, as he sat surrounded by his dead sister's scent that still lingered deep in the wood, and he forced himself to stay still even as he brutally pushed down the memories of a little girl with long dark braids who hadn't yet begun to bleed, of a sweet and delicate face laughing in joy as she held on tight and swung higher on this very swing as he pushed her, of an angelic girl-child face lighting up in happiness and true belief as she swung the door open and ran into the arms of her brother, her 'Angel.'  
  
And with those memories, he also forced down the growing panic that was threatening to engulf him as the golden fingers crept closer. He held on as long as he could, waiting for the sun to rise, waiting for him to be able to defy nature and witness it, but why he was trying to do this he didn't know. It simply felt as though it needed to be done.   
  
//What we once were informs all that we have become//  
  
Was what she said to him after his victory true? He watched the rays of deadly beautiful sun creep closer to his feet. So innocent, and now so dangerous. No, he finally decided. No it couldn't be true. Couldn't possibly. He wouldn't let his defeat during life shape him now. He wasn't Liam anymore, she'd told him that herself. He wasn't!  
  
So unsure and lost in thought was he, that he only realised his toes had touched the sun when the pain came, streaking suddenly through his whole body like the shrieking wail of a banshee. He shot to his feet and dove back through the doorway, knowing now he couldn't defy nature, watching in sadness as the sun covered the porch swing he'd just been seated on, watching as it covered his childhood, the man he'd once been....  
  
But not, *not* the demon he now was.  
  
He wouldn't, *couldn't* let his father mentally control him for eternity. His past life was dead to him now, dead like the bodies laying cold in the kitchen, dead like the porch swing, covered by sunlight, something he could never touch again. And with them was the heart that had yearned for nurturing, for acceptance. He had no heart now. Only the blood, only the kill, only the hunt and his Dam and the power. They were all he had now. They were all he needed.  
  
The man once known as Liam turned and walked steadfastly back to the bedroom, his childhood bedroom where his mother had once sang him to sleep every night, where he'd told his sister stories of wild and heroic adventures, and she'd sat excited and begging for more on top of the covers in her nightgown as he'd lain tucked in beneath her.  
  
But now, now none of that mattered anymore, and he'd go in there and take his Dam hard and fast on sheets he'd lain in at nighttime when he prayed to a God he could never touch now.  
  
His back drooped for a moment as he thought that, but then he straightened suddenly. Did he care? Did he care now? Did he care about the God that had forgotten him along with the father who'd never wanted him?  
  
//What we once were informs all that we have become//  
  
No. That wasn't the truth at all. On this, she had been wrong.  
  
He smiled viciously in victory as he stepped through the doorway and into the bedroom, canines long, brow ridged, eyes shining with an unholy amber light. His Dam opened her eyes and watched him for a few moments before holding her arms out, beckoning for him to come close. And he went.   
Did he care?  
  
//I was never in your way, boy....//  
  
No. He didn't.   
  
  
End.  



End file.
